


Birdwatching

by Attic_Nights



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Drugged Agent, Easter Eggs, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-07 23:50:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Attic_Nights/pseuds/Attic_Nights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We have flown the air like birds and swum the seas like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers. --Martin Luther King</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birdwatching

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written as part of the muncle community (or possibly network_command) Easter Egg exchange on livejournal, a few years ago. Written for Elmey, who wanted an egg that goes birdwatching with unexpected results, but gen results. 
> 
> Although, a word of warning: I had just finished a Joseph Conrad obsession when I wrote this, and my mind was warped like plastic on asphalt. Ewwp.

Illya would be arriving in five, maybe ten, minutes. And when the Russian came, Napoleon was comforted that he wouldn’t need to get up to let him in, nor waste time with pretentious preliminaries. Illya would insult him, he would snipe, they’d laugh and they’d get the job done at the same time.  
  
He relaxed on the bed. It was an uncanny sort of place. Up on the high ceiling was a skylight—alarmed, no doubt—which offered a view of the softly clouded sky and the birds that sailed overhead. When he tilted his head up and to the left, a window framed the pocket-sized birds that played and flittered in the long grasses. It was in contrast to the small Spartan room, which inside its cedar timbered walls, offered a bed and chest of drawers and a strange sort of security.  
  
Napoleon surveyed the room again briefly, frowning minutely at the silver needle on the thin-legged chest, before blinking once, and turning back his attention to the sky birds. ‘Frowning gives you wrinkles,’ a silly old lady once told him. The large grey creatures were captivating, moving on strong thick wings and slender ungainly necks. Their beaks pointed to the future and their legs stayed tucked up out of the way. Napoleon looked at the cast shadows, and discerned that it would be another four minutes before his sneaky Russian wandered on in. _Hmm.. poosee-cat, poosee-cat, where have you—?_  
  
He turned his head up and to the left, frowning when his spine twisted, then _smiled_. The other window, a few feet away, held the display of the small little working birds. Sparrows, finches, or were they swallows? _No_ , he grimaced, _probably thrush for the THRUSH._ If he listened carefully, he could hear the high-pitched squeal of the tawny and black feathers wafting in and out through the thick iron glass. Napoleon rolled his eyes back upon the drawer top— for some reason the silver needle was empty. He _should_ know why. Illya wo—  
  
A large sky bird landed, stumbling on impact, and the small little pocket-birds replaced their ruffled feathers with small pointed eyes more suited for leering at the interruption. Napoleon smiled, charm thrown to the wind, and he absent-mindedly flexed his limbs, jingling the chains that attached him to the ironwood bed. He could hardly feel them. In another day, this could seem so laughingly simple; he was in one of the nicer holding cells he’d ever experienced, and he could also escape on his own if he wanted to, eventually. A corner of his mouth twitched upwards at the simplicity. It would take more than four to six minutes though. Napoleon relaxed, grinning.  
  
Yes, Illya will come for him shortly, in a minute or two. But until then, he was just going to watch the birds fly on by.  



End file.
